A payroll failure at step 19 cost us two days

Problem Description

tests/TC-88-payroll-run.md is the case we run before every payroll release. It is thirty-four steps long and it covers, in one pass, an ordinary monthly run plus a mid-month joiner, a leaver, an employee with a court-ordered deduction, and a bonus payment.

Last month it failed at step 19. It took two days to work out what had actually broken, because step 19 reads a figure produced back at step 9, and nobody could establish whether the deduction set up at step 12 had been applied at all. In the end the defect was in the leaver calculation, which is a completely different part of the product from the step that reported the failure.

The case also cannot be picked up halfway. A tester who only has an hour cannot run the bonus part, because the bonus steps sit on top of a pay run committed twenty steps earlier. And two testers cannot work on it at the same time.

We want the same coverage arranged so that one red result points at one behaviour, and so that any part of it can be run on its own, in any order, by someone who has not run the others.

Output Specification

Produce one markdown document at exactly tests/payroll-run-scripts.md containing:

1. The same coverage, restructured so that a failure identifies a single behaviour.
2. A summary table at the top listing each part with its identifier, what it covers, and roughly how long it takes.
3. For each part, everything that must be true before its first step, using the employees and pay periods in the attached data file - no part may depend on another part having been run first.
4. For each step, the one figure or screen state that decides pass or fail.
5. Whatever is needed so the same part can be run again next week without a tester having to clean up by hand or guess.
6. A place to record failures.

Out of scope: automating any of this, and changing how payroll calculates anything.

Input Files

Extract the following files before beginning.

=============== FILE: tests/TC-88-payroll-run.md ===============

TC-88 - Monthly payroll run

Preconditions: payroll is set up.

1. Log in to payroll.
2. Open the current pay period.
3. Check the employee list loads.
4. Check the headcount.
5. Click Calculate.
6. Wait for the calculation to finish.
7. Check the gross total.
8. Open the first employee's payslip.
9. Note the net pay figure.
10. Go back to the list.
11. Open the new starter added this month.
12. Add the court order from the HR ticket.
13. Recalculate.
14. Check the new starter's payslip is pro-rated.
15. Check the pro-rata days.
16. Open the leaver.
17. Check the final pay includes holiday accrual.
18. Check the P45 flag is set.
19. Compare the net pay to the figure from step 9.
20. Add the bonus for the sales team.
21. Recalculate.
22. Check the bonus is taxed.
23. Check the bonus shows as a separate line.
24. Commit the pay run.
25. Check the run status is Committed.
26. Download the bank file.
27. Check the bank file totals.
28. Check the journal export.
29. Check the payslips are published to the employee portal.
30. Check the leaver cannot see next month.
31. Repeat step 14 for the second new starter.
32. Check the deduction schedule for the court order.
33. Check the audit trail.
34. Log out.

=============== FILE: tests/payroll-test-data.md ===============

Payroll UAT data

Environment: https://payroll-uat.harborpay.example Tester login: qa.payroll@harborpay.example (role: Payroll Administrator). A Payroll Approver login qa.approver@harborpay.example is required to commit a run; the Administrator role cannot commit on its own.

Seeded employees (company HARBOR-UK)

Pay periods

A period can be committed exactly once. Committing 2026-03 makes it permanently unavailable for another run. Support can clone the company into a fresh sandbox (HARBOR-UK-<yourname>) on request, which restores all five employees and reopens 2026-03; the clone takes about ten minutes.

Expected values published by Finance for March 2026